All the Creatures

Ever wondered how pets from dogs to horses end up with some odd registered names? Both dog and horse breeders go by similar “rules.” Here are a few of them that are applied to both dogs and horses:

• The offspring is a combination of both parents names. This works more for very small dog litters or horses.
• The dog or horse’s name is preceded by the “farm” or “kennel” name. For example a horse breeding farm named “High Trotting Castle” would be shortened to HTC and that HTC would precede the horse’s registered name that was bred by HTC. Example “htc desire“  or htc Star Light. Dog kennels would not use the initials but would use the whole name like “Woodbury Farm’s Golden Boy” or “Woodbury Farm’s Lady Dash”

When I bred Chow Chows years ago I did something just a bit different. I put the kennel name after their registered name. My kennels name was “Lion’s Lair,” and I named one of my dogs Brutus. He was named “Brutus of Lion’s Lair.”

As you can see, registered names can be as creative as your imagination. Can you change your pets registered name? Some registries allow you to do that….for a fee. But most people give their horses and dogs nicknames or as we call it for horses, “barn names.”

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Did dragons actually exist at one time? Or are they fabricated legends based on real dinosaurs?

Imagine yourself as a farmer about 1200 years ago in Europe. You can’t read and the only history you are aware of are from the tales that travelers tell about their journeys in foreign lands. You learned how to farm and plant crops from your parents. One day you are digging a new well and while digging, you unearth a huge bone. The bone is longer and larger than anything you have seen before. You keep digging and then you find a skull of a large beast. You have never seen anything like it before. Your imagination runs wild. You do not know that the bones are fossilized and have been there for millions of years. You assume the bones and skull are a recent death. You then tell your neighbors and the story spreads. Soon someone comes to look at the bones and they declare that they are from a fire breathing dragon.

So the myth now spreads and develops. Someone puts together an imaginative tale of how the “dragon” died. Other people find more bones in the same general area and now the tale has grown to a family of dragons in the area. Any missing livestock are now blamed on the dragons in the area. The same thing with fires that mysteriously start in barns (even though they are probably from spontaneous combustion of improperly cured hay).

You can see how legends like dragons could come about.  Each culture around the world has their own stories of dragons. For more fascinating stories about dragons and how each culture has treated them, read “A Little History of Dragons.”

My daughter is a fan of myths and fantasy. She has a wonderful book called Dragonology which she found on sale several years ago. It is a blend of myth, legend and pure fantasy based on historical finds.

So next time someone talks about a mythical creature, think to yourself that it probably has some basis in fact.

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In the bygone era of BI (AKA Before the Internet), most of our knowledge of nature and animals came from textbooks, TV and newspaper news, books written by specialists in their field and documentaries shown on TV or at the movies. If you went to your local library it would be a crap shoot if you got up to date information on the subject you were trying to research. At that time we were unaware of the information that was outdated.

Just a few months ago I wrote on this blog about how I had to do a research project on the ancient history of the horse and found out that the horse originated on the North American continent and not in Asia as was the old information that many people were taught. In fact prior to the 1970’s most horse books stated the erroneous fact of horses originally coming from Asia or the middle East. I have one of those books in my back room. In fact the discovery of the horse developing in North America was in the 1920’s and then further evidence was found in the 1950’s. Apparently that knowledge was not widely known, until the internet came along.

Instead of waiting until a book is published with new scientific evidence, the information is now released via the internet. The information is fast and detailed. Scientists now collaborate in real time over vast remote areas. Our understanding of nature and its history are now greatly improved.

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